No one had his letters brought to his house. If he wanted his mail, or wished to send a letter, he went to the post-office. The nine o'clock parade of citizens making toward that building was one of the regular features of life in the town. At nine in the evening a church bell rang the curfew,—although it had absolutely no significance. It had always been done: that was reason sufficient for an old and conservative place. When the ringer died, or something else happened to stop its mournful sound, a well-to-do citizen quickly provided funds to continue the ringing. The curfew laws, with their reference to children, had not come into vogue, so the bell sounded each evening simply out of regard for an old custom. Few heard it, and to few of these did it make the slightest difference.
We did not often hear foreign tongues or see foreign faces on the streets. Once in a while we might overhear two old women, with shawls over their heads, conversing in Irish as they passed along. The Mediterranean peoples had not arrived,—although they had sent a pioneer in the person of Mr. Mazzoni, who presided over a little stand at the foot of Main Street, and was an important personage to us, because of the peanuts which he sold.
The boys who went to the parochial school, the Pats and Mikes, were a kind of hostile crew, and when we met it was usually with an exchange of horse-chestnuts or snowballs. This was because of no racial or religious animosity,—we were simply two rival gangs, that was all. On one occasion, when Ed Mason and I met a number of the parochial school boys out in the country, there was an exchange of epithets that stopped (as such meetings did not always stop) this side of blows. I was reduced to a state of almost tearful indignation when one of the little Irish boys asserted that I was "a Protestant."
I denied the charge vehemently, but when I got home and repeated the insult, I learned that it was only too true. I had never suspected it, and had gone on thinking that I was merely a Unitarian. Alas, it seemed that I was a Protestant as well.
The charm and quaintness of the past had by no means vanished from the old town. Wooden ships were still built on the river, now and then, and the sea-captains gathered and gossiped in the rooms of the Marine Society. Overhead was a museum of curiosities of the deep, and of foreign lands. Some one of the captains would always be willing to unlock the room for us, and let us inspect the dusty albatross, the dried flying-fishes, the little ships in bottles, and all the other objects of interest.
One grocery, still displayed the sign "E. & W. I. Goods," and more than one citizen walked the streets in a beaver hat. There was old fat Captain Millett, who tacked down Main Street every morning in summer under an enormous green-lined umbrella, big enough to shelter a family. There was Captain Bannister, who lived alone in his curious little house on West Injy Lane, where he cultivated a garden patch of cinnamon pinks. And there was Mr. Babbitt, the Quaker gentleman, who used to pass with stately tread, as we played on Elm Street, or about the pond. He was tall and dignified, and he wore a high hat and a frock coat,—I had almost said a surtout,—with a shirt collar so high and antiquated that he seemed to belong to the time of Martin Van Buren. He kept on his black velvet ear-caps until summer was well advanced, and he put them on again the first of September. But he was the friend of a great poet, and every one respected him for that, as well as for his own character.
There was still a town crier,—one of the last, or, as he claimed, the very last one in this country. "Squawboo" (as we were told we must not call him), or Mr. Landford (as we were told we ought to call him), walked the streets with a large dinner bell. He would pause at intervals, and ring his bell vigorously. Then, throwing back his head, he would emit a volume of sound which would strike the hearer with astonishment. I have seen strangers paralyzed with amazement as they heard for the first time, and unexpectedly, the deep, tremendous tones that issued from his throat.
"Hear—what—I—have—to—say!" he would begin. "Grand—dance—at—City—Hall—to-morrow—evening—at—eight—o'clock.—Admission—fifty—cents—ladies free!—COME, ONE—COME, EVERYBODY!!"